Feckless father who has EIGHTEEN children by TEN women and hasn’t worked in 20 years claims council is violating his human rights – by refusing to give him a six-bedroom house

The headline provides all the information any reader needs about this story — with the exception of the fact that local government is actually listening to this guy’s complaints, and was ordered to give him a small amount of money — but I suppose John wants a blog post longer than one sentence.

The short version is this father, who is 64, lives in a four-bedroom house provided by the government. He moved in about 18 months ago, and has five kids and two grandchildren who live with him. The father of his grandchildren stays four days a week to help take care of the family, and on the weekends four of the patriarch’s other children — he has 18 by 10 women, which he excuses as having “made some mistakes” — stay with them. One of the rooms in the current house is moldy.

He says, of course, it’s all about the children:

None of the children who are of working age have jobs and Mr Rolfe says he relies instead on state handouts like housing benefit and child tax credit to get by.

He said: ‘They are all in further education so they can get some qualifications and get good jobs.’

Mr Rolfe, who claims to have nine further children — with whom he no longer has contact — added: ‘I have 18 children with about ten women. I made some mistakes when I was younger but now I’ll do anything to make my kids happy.

‘Getting a larger house would mean the world to us. It would mean we could get some peace: and space.’

by Sir John Hawkins

John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.

He said: ‘I hate to see the children have no space, no privacy. They have nowhere to do their homework so they are doing badly at school.’

Incredibly, Mr Rolfe successfully complained to the Local Government Ombudsman that the property, which he moved into in September 2011, was too small.

The watchdog agreed that one of the rooms was too tiny to be legally classed as a bedroom and ruled that Mr Rolfe and his family had suffered a serious injustice as a result of failings by the Isle of Wight Council.

However the authority this week rejected the ombudsman’s recommendation to pay the family :£1,000 in compensation and bump them to the top of the housing register because it was against policy.

Members agreed a lesser amount of :£250 was sufficient.

Here’s the best part:

The council says it does not have any six-bed homes available but is now considering buying a property big enough for them — or: knocking two together to create one large house.

He said: ‘I don’t care about the money, it is about the children and their human right to live.

‘It’s an ongoing injustice but I will never give up on my children.’

Note that the father of the grandchildren is 24, and the mother — Rolfe’s daughter — is 17. I wonder what the statutory rape laws are in England, and why Rolfe — if he cares so much about his children — appears to be a-okay with a clearly irresponsible older guy being around his family, impregnating his daughter, etc.

Which leads to the real concern I have with this whole situation: Mr. Rolfe is setting his children up for the ultimate failure throughout their lives. Low moral standards, no self-pride, being more skilled at manipulating taxpayer money than earning an income…all of it. The housing claim he is making is merely a symptom of a larger problem. The government ought to be taking those kids away, something that is actually worth spending public dollars on.

Please note that the place has three full bedrooms and a tiny fourth bedroom. A six-bedroom house would cost upwards of 300,000 Euro, or slightly over $417,000.